Earthquake Early Warning in New Zealand
Earthquake Early Warning in New Zealand
Earthquake
Early Warning is available and has been working in New
Zealand since mid-2014.
The cost effective Palert
seismometer range is designed and built in Taiwan by San
Lien and sold in New Zealand and around the world by New
Zealand company Jenlogix limited.
Many of Jenlogix
clients use the onsite early warning feature of Palerts to
provide them with time to mitigate the impact of the
earthquake. Key reasons for implementation have been for
health and safety compliance plus infrastructure and asset
protection.
As an example, Wellington clients
received a 19 second warning of arrival of the shock wave
from the Kaikoura earthquake.
Jenlogix has many NZ
companies and organisations using the Palert, such as Kiwi
Rail, Trust Power, Meridian, Callaghan Innovation,
Wellington water, Wellington Electricity, Massey University
etc.
As the primary P-wave travels almost twice as
fast as the secondary S-wave it is possible to predict the
size of the shock wave. The P-wave algorithm to do this was
developed by Professor Wu in response to the destructive
Taiwan, Chi Chi earthquake in 1999.
Early warning
has been widely used in Japan and Taiwan for many years and
has been proven to be highly reliable. Due to the low cost
of the Palerts, the system was able to be rolled out to over
600 schools in Taiwan at a fraction of the cost of more
traditional systems.
Jenlogix have supplied Palert
systems to the USA, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and have
opportunities developing in the Middle East and
Indonesia.
Even a single unit can provide early
warning however it is only with a country wide system that
you can provide a countdown to the earthquake and the
expected intensity warning to the individual
sites.